U.S. Test System with High Spatial and Temporal Resolution for Renewable Integration Studies

Planning for power systems with high penetrations of variable renewable energy requires higher spatial and temporal granularity. However, most publicly available test systems are of insufficient fidelity for developing methods and tools for high-resolution planning. This paper presents methods to construct open-access test systems of high spatial resolution to more accurately represent infrastructure and high temporal resolution to represent dynamics of demand and variable resources. To demonstrate, a high-resolution test system representing the United States is created using only publicly available data. This test system is validated by running it in a production cost model, with results compared against historical generation to ensure that they are representative. The resulting open source test system can support power system transition planning and aid in development of tools to answer questions around how best to reach decarbonization goals, using the most effective combinations of transmission expansion, renewable generation, and energy storage.